


Eventually

by sungold



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Collegestuck, F/M, Gen, Humanstuck, Other, Quirked Dialogue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6999286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungold/pseuds/sungold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat can’t think of a single person Vriska could possibly be close with. Then again, having no friends is a common a side effect of being a bitch. Still, it must suck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eventually

**Author's Note:**

> (This fic features quirked dialogue.)

Karkat tossed his bookbag beside him as he sat in the seat across from Vriska. He put an arm on the table and leaned forward. "LOOK. I GENUINELY DISLIKE YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR IN ALMOST EVERY WAY, SHAPE, AND FORM." He pauses. This is more difficult than he thought. "BEING PAIRED WITH YOU TO DO THIS PROJECT IS QUITE LITERALLY THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY ACADEMIC CAREER BECAUSE I CAN'T FUCKING STAND YOUR PRESENCE," Yet a competitive smirk shows through his grimace. "BUT LET'S NOT LET THAT GET IN THE WAY OF MAKING SURE OUR GROUP PROJECT IS BETTER THAT EVERYONE ELSE'S."

Brushing a small strand of black hair that hung over her face and tucking it behind her ear, she looked up to her partner, a broad, cocky smile painted on her face, as if she knew he would eventually come to her in this over dramatic manner. "Come on, Karkat! Don't 8e such a grump a8out it. I mean, you do have me on your team after all, so it can't 8e the worst thing to ever happen to you. At least you're not stuck with that crippled kid." With that she stood up, the feet of the chair squealing as it pushed along the laminated floor. "I'll even let you 8e leader, if you want. Isn't that what you always talked a8out and everything?"

His disgust is visible and when he looks up at her, it takes everything in his power to not spit on her for that crippled kid comment. "HIS NAME IS TAVROS AND I WOULD PAY MONEY TO WORK WITH HIM INSTEAD." The latter part of that statement hits him a little late. "AND NO. THERE IS NO 'LEADER' BECAUSE THERE IS NO 'TEAM'. YOU DO YOUR PART, I'LL DO MINE, WE GET THE GRADE, WE NEVER SPEAK TO EACH OTHER EVER AGAIN."

Her face contorted for a moment to match his disgust, though it was more a look of dissatisfaction with a twinge of anger (and despair?) ever so slightly lining the edges and lines, barely seen. After a moment of holding this expression, she flipped her hair and conceded, if only slightly. "Fine, geez. 8ut don't say I didn’t try to 8e nice.." She looked to the clock for a moment before quickly turning back to him. It seems like time moves slowest when you’re trying to work on projects with assholes who couldn’t care less about you. "So, you got any ideas or do you just want me to do everything?"

He laughs in response. "AS IF I WOULD WILLINGLY LET YOU FUCK UP MY GRADE." Karkat reaches into his bag and grabs a notebook. "I DO THE RESEARCH AND YOU TRY TO MAKE IT LOOK NICE. THINK YOU CAN HANDLE THAT?" He says this while flipping through the notes and writing somethings near the margins. He starts writing uncharacteristically small so she doesn't notice that his handwriting is shitty. Look at that. His 'b' looks like a goddamn '6' for crying out loud.

"Of course, Karkat..." Her eyes flick down to his hand, narrowing slightly as she tries to read what he writes for a moment before tapping the desk, her dark blue fingernails loud against the polished wood. "Please tell me you aren't just writing tiny scri88les or whatever that jewish language is. I have to 8e a8le to read your research, y’know." Her tone is friendly, though slightly harsh, as if she was giving criticism.

And damn it, she's right. "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE RESEARCHING RIGHT NOW?" Yes, Karkat. Avert attention from yourself. He looks at her with what seems like impatience, flipping to a clean page to rewrite the important stuff from the previous pages in neat, blunt bullet points.

Vriska looks to be insulted for a small second before smiling and leaning forward slightly, which causes a few strands of hair to fall forward, much to her dismay. "Of course I do! I know you love helping the 8rainless, seeing as how you hang out with so many, 8ut please appreci8 me for 8eing the only one of your friends who is capa8le at anything.” Something about that friend part trips her up and she smoothly shoves the conversation forward. “Now hurry up! I know you're a Cancer 8ut that doesn’t mean you have to move at a cra8’s pace!" She smiled broadly, laughing at her own pun for a long moment before finally calming down with a sigh.

He sets the notebook down on the table and reaches into the pocket of his crimson jacket. "WOW, YOU SURE ARE GOOD AT SAVING FACE." He takes out his phone and types a few things in. "SINCE YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AND YOU'RE WAY TOO PRIDEFUL AND UNPRODUCTIVE TO JUST ADMIT THAT AND ASK, I'LL TELL YOU." Ugh, the campus wifi sucks ass and he hates it. He stares at the loading wheel. "WE HAVE TO DO A PRESENTATION ON NAPOLEON FOR MRS.NEOPHYTE'S CLASS." Seriously, what the fuck is up with the wifi here? "THE BITCH ALSO WANTS A PAPER WRITTEN OUT BUT I DON'T WANT YOUR HALF-ASSED PAINTED FINGERNAILS ON THAT. SO I GUESS YOU WON'T BE DOING THAT. YOU'RE WELCOME?" He trails off. Oh wow. Turns out he is a Cancer. Who knew? Other than her, that is. Wait, why does she know his sign? "IF I'M A CANCER, WHAT ARE YOU?"

"I don't need to save face 8ecause I o8viously already knew that. Thanks for the refresher though, really!" She half glared down at him, her previously cocky smile turning up in annoyance as he continued to complain about nothing important, not like what he was in the first place was all that important either. "If you haven’t noticed, Mrs.Neophyte loves me!” Vriska draws out the word ‘love’, probably for comedic effect. “Seriously, have you seen the nods she gives me? We could put dogshit on a sheet of paper and she’ll give me an 90."

"MRS.NEOPHYTE HATES YOUR GUTS AND WOULD FLUNK YOU IN A HEARTBEAT, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN ON ABOUT?" He shakes his head frustratedly, falling victim to the clickbait that is TheSignsAs.com. So many lists… He clicks the first one, which isn’t even fully loaded. “WHATEVER. THIS DELUSION OF YOU BEING LIKABLE DOESN'T MATTER. WHAT'S YOUR SIGN?" Not that he cares about her birthday or zodiacs or anything of the sort, because he doesn't. Being born at a certain time does not affect your personality, nor your future. Anyone who believes in horoscopes should be more worried about their impressively low IQ and less about which dog breed they would be. That being said, this list says Cancers are Labradors and he can totally see himself as a Labrador Retriever. Karkat shoves the phone in her face. "DO YOU THINK I'M A LABRADOR?"

A look of disgust washed over her face as she reared back, pushing the phone away from her. "Look. If you wanna know so 8ad, I'm a Scorpio, the 8est of the lame zodiac signs.” A small but sincere giggle slips out of Vriska and it’s clear that she just made herself uncomfortable with that. “Now 8ack to the project! I'm not going to get a 8ad grade 8ecause you wanted to drone on a8out stars or gods or whatever." She turned her head to the side with finalizing grunt, her hair swinging forward and around to the side of her head for a moment before falling back into place as she adjusted her glasses.

Karkat scrolls down on the list a bit and mumbles "YEAH, YOU’RE A HUSKY ALRIGHT.." He bookmarks the page and sets his phone face down. "AND FOR ONCE, YOU'RE ACTUALLY RIGHT. WE SHOULD FOCUS." Again, he picks up the notebook, quickly but monotonously reading off the bullets he had written so far. "SO NAPOLEON ENDED THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. HE WAS BORN ON AUGUST 15TH AND DIED MAY 5TH, ALONE WHILE ON SOME ISLAND DURING HIS HOUSE ARREST." He skims the rest of his notes before looking back at the top. "WHAT SIGN ARE YOU IF YOU'RE BORN IN AUGUST?"

Vriska isn’t sure what is annoying her more: his sloppy notes that focus on irrelevant details, his lack of focus on the task at hand, or the fact that he can’t do basic counting to know that obviously Napoleon is a Leo and a textbook one at that. She sucks her teeth. "That doesn’t matter! Just remem8er he also waged multiple wars, which got him sent to the island in the first place, and was like super awesome for the French Government 8efore fucking up and trying to invade Russia for shits and giggles.” Vriska made a dramatic gesture to show just how passionate she is about this topic. “If I were Napoleon, I would have done way 8etter." With a small chuckle she leaned forward, pushing his notebook back down so that it lay flat on the table before looking over his paper for a moment, making weird faces as she struggled to make out the words. "Remem8er what I said a8out writing legi8ly? I could give you a few lessons on English if you want them."

He groans. "MY HANDWRITING DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE I'M TYPING IT!" He bats her hand away and tilts the notebook away from her. In doing so, two derpy doodles can be seen on the back. "LIKE I SAID, I WILL GATHER THE INFORMATION, SO GO STEAL MONEY FROM ORPHANS OR WHATEVER THE FUCK VICIOUS PEOPLE LIKE YOU DO FOR FUN AND I'LL HAVE A LIST OF WHAT SHOULD GO ON WHAT SLIDE TOMORROW." He's only trying to dismiss her so he can goof off and scroll through Cancer posts. Karkat glances around the room. Wonder what everyone else's sign is...

"Orphans wouldn’t have money to steal, idiot.” The person she addresses that statement to mouths the word ‘Wow’ and Vriska, realizing that she played into the insult, stutters as she tries to backtrack. “Uh, anyways, it sounds good to me. You shouldn’t 8e a8le to fuck this up." With a small tap, she pulled away from him. Thinking for a moment, Vriska pulls out a pen and writes something down. The lines curve together into a rough looking cursive. "Here’s my email. Send me the info through here. Rumor has it, we can get extra points if we turn it in early!"

Oof. And she thought his handwriting was bad. And does that say ArachnidsGrip_88 ? Is she aware how cringy that email address is? On fucking AOL, no less?! Karkat makes a judgemental face at Vriska while picking his phone back up and taking a picture of the writing. Like hell is he going to keep that physical cringefest in his pocket. All that edge might cut hole in his pants. "YEAH. COOL. WHATEVER. BYE."

Vriska starts to gather the few things she bothered to bring and he immediately shifts back to the tab involving zodiac signs. Fuck, he can feel his entire day being drained into these twelve shit symbols. Karkat looks up, abruptly speaking in a meager voice. "HEY, BEFORE YOU GO, WHERE DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THE ZODIAC SIGNS?" A wave of embarrassment floods him and he slinks back into his seat. The regret he feels from extending the period of time where talk is hard to explain and if he could hide behind his phone, he would.

It pisses off her that he keeps making these comments at her inability to do work, yet he is obviously inviting her to slack off with him. She stops gathering her things together just to speak with a sarcastically sweet voice. “In my Western Civics text8ook, duh." A tinge of pity worms it way into Vriska and it inspires her to sit down in the chair that she scooted away. “Do you really wanna know? Like are you actually interested in it?”

Karkat looks as if he wasn’t expecting her to take him seriously. “SORT OF, YEAH. JUST SEEMS LIKE A FUN THING TO KNOW MORE ABOUT…” He trails off a little because quite honestly he isn’t sure where the hell this conversation is about to go. Vriska tends to be hard to read when it comes to what she is sincerely thinking. It’s actually a little… Sad? Ever since he met Vriska, their interactions have consisted of arguments and insults. Unlike Karkat, who is capable of calling his friends a fuckwad and then helping them with whatever they are going through, Vriska can only do the former. All tough but no love. Karkat can’t think of a single person Vriska could possibly be close with. Then again, having no friends is a common a side effect of being a bitch. Still, it must suck.

“Fine.”

Wait, what? Fine? What is fine? Karkat was too busy thinking to notice how grim and serious the look on Vriska’s face is. She takes another scrap of paper and writes something. He tries to peek but she is moves her arm so he can’t see.

“This we8site is 8asically the 8i8le of zodiacs. Anything you could ever want to know is availa8le there.” She half-whispers this statement and slides the paper to Karkat. It takes him a moment to take in the sobriety of all this. He slowly lifts up the slip of paper and reads it.

 

“OH FUCK YOU.”

Vriska reels backwards, cackling at her own joke as Karkat crumples up the paper that reads ‘Google’ and flicks it at her. Guess she couldn’t help herself to being antagonizing. Truthfully, Karkat found the joke funny but the fact that this chick can’t bring herself to not be shallow for one fucking conversation irritates the shit out of him. Vriska’s laughter is pretty booming given the quiet library atmosphere and she is making attempts to stop but it seems like it’s going to take a minute.

With the spite of a million suns, Karkat searches Astrology on Bing.

“I read 8ooks on it.” Vriska finally says between the post-laughing fit chuckles. Karkat double takes at the sound of the sentence. Is she fucking with him again or…?

She notices the questioning look he has and continues. “My 8ig sister works at the li8rary in Seattle. The 8ig one, not the shitty one with like zero 8ooks. It was her first jo8 8ut seeing how things are now, it’ll pro8a8ly 8e her only jo8 until her lame ass retires.” Vriska’s face has melted into what could only be described as nostalgic. “When I was a kid and she had just gotten out of high school, I would have to loiter around the li8rary when school was over until mom came to pick me up. So I read a lot of 8ooks.” She shrugs. “Astrology may 8e hocus pocus 8ullshit 8ut there is a lot that goes into star charts. I’m talking Alge8ra and Geology and Mythology. It gets crazy.”

Silence is what she gets as a response and it makes Vriska nervous. Not only did she reveal that she had a somewhat deadbeat sister, but she also disclosed one of her favorite hobbies. So help her, if Karkat goes off blabbing about this to one of his idiot friends---

“THAT’S ACTUALLY PRETTY BAD ASS.” Karkat comments with a pleasantly surprised smile. “I WISH I GOT TO HANG AROUND A LIBRARY AFTERSCHOOL. IN PHILLY, WE HAD THESE PROGRAMS THAT WAS BASICALLY EXTENDED SCHOOL SO WE WOULDN’T GET SHANKED WHILE OUR PARENTS WERE ON THEIR WAY. WELL, THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS DID. I ONLY HAD TO DO THAT ONCE AND THEN MY UNCLE PUT MY BROTHER AND I IN PRIVATE SCHOOL.”

Now it was Vriska’s turn to be shocked. “You went to private school?” Karkat, the guy who has worn the exact same jacket for the past three months. Karkat, the guy who has a whiteboard in his dormroom not to keep score or to write dumb messages on, but to manage his schedule. Karkat, the sailor mouth who once said that the professor of his Bio 101 couldn’t teach for shit to his wrinkly old face and thus dropping the class despite it being essential. This Karkat, the one sitting across from Vriska, went to private school? Bullshit. 

“YEP. IT SUCKED ASS BUT I DID IT. FAMILY WAS CONCERNED ABOUT THE QUALITY OF LIFE IN SOUTH PHILLY SO IN SEVENTH GRADE WE MOVED TO THE SUBURBS.” He sounds completely bitter and resentful about it, even going as far as to put airquotes around ‘the quality of life’ in case the snobby voice impression of what is probably his uncle didn’t get the message across, which Vriska isn’t quite understanding.

“Hello? You were 8asically the Fresh Prince of 8el-Air! Sounds like a dream come true to me. How on Earth did that suck ass?”

Karkat scoffs. The worst part of being from Philadelphia is the fact that everyone feels inclined to bring up Will Smith. He isn’t even going to try to correct Vriska on how Will Smith left West Philly, not South Philly. The two places were very distinct brands of ghetto. “IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SO BAD IF THE CONTEXT OF THE MOVE WASN’T SO FUCKING HYPOCRITICAL.” Somewhere in that sentence, Karkat realizes that the two are sharing memories and having an actual conversation that isn’t total garbage. It’s enjoyable and he feels the need to tread lightly, as not to ruin the delicate moment of Vriska being tolerable. “BUT, UM, YEAH…”

“I get it. Family issues can get complic8ed. Trust me, I know.” Vriska says, nodding sympathetically. Karkat smiles. Why isn’t she normal like this more often?

“WHAT KIND OF BOOKS DO YOU USUALLY READ?"

"Well........"

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for the fandom and site. This started off as an rp between [Krag](http://8orderlinementality.tumblr.com/) and I but after digging it back up, I wanted to continue it.


End file.
